‘Maybe.’
A dozen intents were colliding in his head, running into one another, bouncing off, like cartoon policemen trying to grab someone who had just vanished into thin air; and what had vanished, he realized, what kept materializing in different parts of the room, shouting, ‘Hey, over here!’ and causing another collision, was his basic intent regarding her… which was something he didn’t care to confront and so made vanish time and again. But at the core of every intent was the tactic or the urge toward seduction. She lifted her head, and in the flickering light he thought he detected a scurrying of dark shapes behind her eyes, as if her purposes, too, were in collision.
‘You shouldn’t be suspicious of me,’ he said, and understanding how ludicrous that statement was, yet that he had meant every word, he laughed. ‘Look, I’ve been pretty fucked up. I, uh…’
‘I know how it is,’ she said. ‘Believe me, I know what they can do to you.’
That hadn’t been his meaning, but he went along with her. ‘Yeah.’ He let a couple of seconds leak away. ‘Why’d you desert?’
She continued to examine the trigger guard. ‘I learned things that made me realize what I was doing was a lie. That made the revolution meaningless.’
Mingolla thought about Alvina and Hermeto. ‘The struggle,’ he said, and gave a dismal laugh.
‘There’s nothing funny about it!’ She smacked the rifle stock against the table.
‘I guess not. It’s just pathetic the way people keep ramming their heads into a brick wall.’
Her face tightened. ‘And what would you do?’
‘It’s not my business. I got roped into this war.’
‘But not into Psicorps.’
‘That’s true, but if I had a choice now, I would desert. I’m tired of killing, of people trying to kill me.’ He was borne away into memories of Coffee, de Zedegui, and the rest, and understood the full measure of their deaths. He felt he had been stripped of some armor that had enabled him to withstand the aftereffects of what he’d done. ‘I just wanna get outta here.’
‘Back to America!’ She made the prospect sound obscene.
‘What’s wrong with that?’
‘Nothing… if you can live with what you’ve seen, if you stuff your knowledge of oppression under a pillow and go back to painting little pictures.’ She snatched up the rifle and stood. ‘I can’t take this. We’ll talk tomorrow.’
‘What can’t you take?’
‘Your self-absorption,’ she said, ‘Your ability to look away from whatever offends your eye. I’m beginning to think it’s a national characteristic.’
‘It’s not my war.’
Her turn to laugh. ‘Oh, yes it is! But you have to decide whose side you’re on.’ She paused in the doorway and—her back toward him—said, ‘I was going to let the soldiers kill you.’
‘Why?’ he said after a silence.
‘You were after me. You might have killed me.’
‘How’d you know I was tracking you?’
‘It doesn’t matter.’
She started through the door.
‘What stopped you?’ he called after her. ‘What the hell stopped you?’
Seconds later, fluttering ribbons of butterflies convoyed Nate into the hut. They settled on the roof poles, and with similar precision, Nate settled on the edge of the chair. His eyes probed Mingolla, and he gave a satisfied nod. ‘I’m thinking it will be all right now.’
Distracted, wishing he hadn’t acted like such an asshole with Debora, Mingolla said, ‘What’s that?’
‘Everything.’ The simplicity of the answer seemed to exploit a simplicity in Nate’s features that Mingolla hadn’t noticed before. He held up a hand, and two butterflies drifted down to decorate his forefinger. ‘ “Twixt purple shadow and gold of sun,”’ he said, ‘“two brown butterflies lightly settle, sleepily swing.”’
The village, a fly-swarmed Indian place littered with dung and mango rinds, was strung out along a bend in a jade-green river and consisted of about thirty huts, all less grand than Nate’s. The high walls of vegetation hemming it in against the river were a weave of lush greens, and by contrast the huts were made of blackened poles lashed together with rotting twine; they were wrecked-looking, pitched at every angle like the remnants of unsuccessful bonfires. Pale smoke trickled from holes in the roofs, and the way the plumes were attenuated and pulled apart by the breeze, drifting into invisibility, they appeared to be responsible for the gradual whitening of the sky. Hammocks were strung inside the huts, plumped full, with children’s faces peeping over the sides; chickens and pigs wandered in and out of doors. Except for a few flattened cans and sun-bleached beer labels on the ground, it might have been a settlement of the Dark Ages.
Mingolla strolled through the village, hunting for Debora, and unable to find her, he stood on the bank, watching the sun burn off streamers of ghost-gray mist. Nate joined him, butterflies clumped in patches on his trousers, others circling above. For want of anything better to do, Mingolla tried to strike up a conversation. ‘Debora tells me you’re a journalist,’ he said.
‘I was,’ Nate said.
‘Uh-huh,’ Mingolla said after waiting a reasonable length of time for more detail. ‘A correspondent?’
Nate seemed to return from a mental vacation. ‘Yes, I was a war correspondent. An occupation with little focus these days.’
Weary of puzzles, Mingolla didn’t attempt to unravel the statement. ‘What’s your last name? Maybe I’ve read your stuff.’
‘Lubove.’
Mingolla sounded the name, heard a familiar resonance. ‘Shit! You’re the guy did the articles on the guy who paints the ruins… the War Painter!’
‘Yes.’
‘You ever find out who he is?’
‘I learned he was Scandinavian. A Dane. But as to his specific identity, no luck there. Have you seen his work?’
‘Just stuff on the news and photographs. Did they manage to save any of it?’
‘Not to my knowledge. His boobytraps are most ingenious. Who would have thought that the profession of curator would have become so hazardous?’
‘Yeah, I saw one of the murals blow up on TV.’ Mingolla kicked at a clump of mud, listened to it plop into the water. ‘Why’re you and Debora going to Panama?’
‘She’ll tell you when she’s ready.’
‘Where is she?’
‘Busy,’ said Nate. ‘She asked me to accompany you this morning.’
‘She said we were gonna talk.’
‘Then you will… but not this morning.’ Nate waved toward the jungle. ‘I thought we’d go for a walk and visit a friend of mine.’
‘Terrific!’ Mingolla threw up his hands. ‘Let’s pack a lunch! Make a picnic out of it!’ Butterflies eddied before his face. ‘Right,’ he said. ‘We’ll go for a walk.’
They set out along a trail that ran downhill through dense growths of bamboo and palmetto, and Mingolla asked whom they were going to visit.
‘God,’ said Nate.
Mingolla inspected him for signs of insanity, then wondered if a walk was the jungle equivalent of taking someone for a ride.
‘Actually, it’s only a computer,’ said Nate. ‘But he makes an intriguing case for his divinity.’
‘A computer… what kinda computer?’
‘An experimental model in one of your helicopters. It was shot down by a Russian missile, and the pilot was killed. But the missile didn’t explode, just penetrated the computer deck. The computer cannibalized the missile for parts and repaired itself. According to it, this syncretic process gave birth to the incarnation.’
‘And you buy that?’
‘Not an easy question to answer,’ said Nate. ‘For a long time I believed only in the god that rose over Tel
